THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON THE TOURISM SECTOR IN INDONESIA
By Khodijah Ishak
In a short time, the Covid-19 pandemic has spread globally involving more than 218 countries, including Indonesia. The tourism sector is the world’s largest foreign exchange contributor after the oil and gas sector, involving 50 million workers in this field. In 2019, a total of 16.11 million tourists visited Indonesia. An estimate of the direct effect of this epidemic is that in 2020 there will be a decrease of up to 80 percent in the number of tourist arrivals. Part of the analysis states that because of the effect of covid 19, the Indonesian tourism industry will be set back 20 years.
The pandemic forced countries around the world to conduct social confinement and territorial quarantine as well as impose a ban on domestic and foreign tourism. This phenomenon affects the entire social and economic life of the world.
Tourism involves other sectors of the economy, but with limited mobility, all tourism-related activities such as the culinary industry, hospitality, transportation services as well as destination regions come to a standstill. Eventually, many individuals and societies experience difficulty in leading their lives normally. On the other hand, the closure of job opportunities in the tourism industry has led to a high number of unemployed.
The tourism sector, in addition to developing economic growth, also fills the values of spiritual satisfaction of each individual. The peace of mind gained through tourism activities is a national asset in creating peace and prosperity.
Despite the fact that people are not able to do tourism activities directly, the tools available via social media technology today can be used as a platform for everyone to do virtual tourism.
In order for the tourism sector to recover and grow a high level of market confidence, it is necessary to vaccinate the actors in the tourism industry as well as the rest of the world at a faster rate. According to Zurab Pololikashvili, UN Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), vaccination was one of the efforts to revive tourism activities, especially for the recovery of the employment sector and generate much-needed sources of income for developing countries that are heavily dependent on the sector.
In addition, reviving the tourism sector in the future can be strengthened through digitalization and optimization of infrastructure, platforms and digital services. This platform presents a marketplace to build bridges and strong networks with partners in the field of tourism in inventory management, simplifying distributed access and business information and analysis.
15 November 2020